Glass lights

Glass is a solid material, of which the most renowned appearance is undoubtedly the colourless, transparent glass that is used for drinking glasses and windows. This type of glass mainly consists out of the chemical compound 'silica'. In addition, you could make use of glass lights, possibly combined with some sort of colouring.

Blown glass

Glass blowers heat up a glass ball at the far end of a metal tube, and blow down this tube in order to expand the glass and therefore create a round element made of glass. This 'ball' will gradually turn into a cylindrical shape, which will be cut length-ways by these experts. Afterward, they can flatten down this cylinder and create a flat glass surface. This method gets used for the mass production of bottles, jars and lights, in all different types of glass production companies. The glass is blown at temperatures exceeding 700° Celsius, after which the glass is placed in a different oven, one that's heated at 500°C. This is to prevent the glass from cooling down too fast, and possibly shatter due to the sudden shock in temperature. Most light source glasses you can find at LampsTotal, are made out of blown glass.             

Pulled glass

A flat glass surface. The experts create a bath of molten down glass, put a (straight) bar horizontally into the liquid, and pull this bar upward. The glass is so very viscose, it will follow the bar automatically. Thanks to this method, a flat glass surfaces comes to be, although it is far from perfect. Old windows are often still created from large surfaces of pulled glass - you can recognise them by the so-called 'pulling stripes': the glass is locally thinner and thicker, which causes the window to look slightly distorted.

Float glass

This method was invented back in 1952 by a certain Pilkington. Experts pour molten glass onto a bath of molten tin. Glass is lighter than tin, and therefore floats on top of its surface. Molten down metals have a perfectly smooth, flat surface, and cause the (bottom of) the glass to be perfectly smooth and flat as well. The surface tension of the glass ensures a perfectly smooth top as well. This 'float glass' method is often used in order to make large plates of glass (6 metres by 3.21 metres). The pouring process is a very consistent one: on one side, the liquid glass is poured onto the liquid tin, on the other side, the hardened glass plate cools down and is cut into the preferred measurements. The thickness of the glass plate can vary anywhere between 0.4mm and 25mm. Nowadays, about 90% of all glass is made following this particular method. That's why the majority of lights you can find on LampsTotal, are also created from glass that was made using this 'float glass' method.

Look for the glass light of your dreams, or look within our selection of glass lights in order to gain some inspiration. Below you will find all of our lights that are made out of glass, as well as lights that are made from a different material, yet still look like they are a glass light. The material and colour of each light is specified on the page of the light itself.